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The author here examines the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian political process after the victory of the January 25 Revolution with a focus on former president Mohamed Morsi's one year in office. The paper begins by analyzing the structural developments and accompanying political strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood while it was a force in the country's political opposition, and how the party reflected on its behavior after the January Revolution in general, but especially during Morsi's reign. The paper focuses on what is considered an exceptional moment in the history of the Muslim Brotherhood: when it went from being an opposition group to taking power in a formal government setting. It examines this extraordinary shift in light of the major challenges of managing the Egyptian state. The paper concludes that the Muslim Brotherhood will not disappear from the political scene given its deep integration into the Egyptian social fabric, and discusses strategies and paths that the organization could adopt in the post-coup era.

Sponsored by the “Safer World” foundation, based in the United Kingdom, this meeting held at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies examined possibilities for the spreading of peace and stability across conflict hotspots around the globe.

This paper methodically studies the relationship between the functions of media organizations and their ownership. The material examined by the author is the content of daily Sudanese newspapers; the hypothesis being tested, from the prism of political economy, is whether or not there is a direct correlation between the ownership of a newspaper and the bias in its content. The paper begins with a survey of editorial content from several Sudanese newspapers and explores the influence of both private sector and public sector funding on their editorial content. The author concludes that despite the presence of a diverse media environment in Sudan, a classically authoritarian power structure reigns over the Sudanese media. This remains true even in the case of privately owned, independent papers, where the loyalty paid by the media owners to the government is not desired.

​Milestones in Democratic Transition in the Arab World

This report chronicles some of the most significant developments relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict during the period from January 1 to February 28, 2017.

This study examines the role of identity, ideas, norms, and interests in shaping the Arab regional order across different historical periods, building on Alexander Wendt's constructivist approach. It critically evaluates both the explanatory power and inherent constraints of this approach in explaining regional dynamics within the Arab region. The study focuses on pivotal junctures linked to major events such as the Baghdad Pact (1955), the 1967 defeat, the Gulf War (1990), the Iraq invasion (2003), and the Arab Spring (2011). It demonstrates how these events reshaped regional identities through competing narratives and dominant dichotomies, where actors' legitimacy depended on their ability to impose narratives and redefine core issues. The study concludes that identity politics and normative frameworks played a central role in shaping regional policies and dynamics. Regional conflicts mainly manifested as struggles over ideational factors and positional roles rather than crude power maximization. Although constructivism offers valuable insights into how identity shapes regional interactions, its explanatory scope remains partial. As with all IR theoretical perspectives, it emphasizes certain dimensions while neglecting others.

​عنوان الكتاب الأول بلغته الأصلية: The End of American World Order. عنوان الكتاب: نهاية النظام العالمي الأميركي. المؤلف: أميتاف أشاريا Amitav Acharya. دار النشر: Polity. سنة النشر: 2018. عدد الصفحات: 138. عنوان الكتاب الثاني بلغته الأصلية: Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. عنوان الكتاب: اللفياثان الليبرالي: أصول وأزمة وتحول النظام العالمي الأميركي. المؤلف: جون إكنبري Gilford John Ikenberry. دار النشر: Princeton University Press. سنة النشر: 2011. عدد الصفحات: 372.

This study analyses the constructivist perspective of security and establishes the constructivist contribution to security studies, particularly in terms of the conventional and critical constructivist approaches, arguing that constructivism has constituted an intellectual turning point. It demonstrates how constructivism, or rather constructivisms, has enriched and developed the concept of security and security studies on three levels. First, it approaches security as socially constructed and intersubjective. Second, it has undertaken a critical revision of major rationalist concepts, notably anarchy and the security dilemma. Third, it has introduced concepts of identity, interests, and norms to the field of security studies. However, there are shortcomings in the constructivist contribution on identity and security, in addition to inter-constructivist disagreements, which have prevented the evolution of a clear theoretical framework, even within critical constructivism, which has made the most innovative contributions to the field. The study concludes that constructivism has not formulated a distinct theory of security. However, its innovative contributions and its role as a theoretical reference point for new approaches to security constitute a constructivist perspective within International Relations. Both critical and non-critical strands of the new security approach have developed security theories grounded in constructivist insights. This constitutes the central theoretical achievement of constructivism in the field of security studies.

The pattern of authoritarianism in Arab states has popularized the view that elections are a mere formality with no real political weight and are thus unworthy of study. Therefore, the field of electoral studies, in Arabic, has not received enough attention, despite being one of the most important thematic branches in contemporary political science. This paper defends the importance of exploring this field in Arabic, and employing approaches advanced by social sciences. It briefly presents the historical development of elections in the region since the 19 th century, which shows that elections are not a political act alien to the region, rather a well-established practice in several Arab contexts, if not always an expression of democratic rule. It introduces questions raised by contemporary Arab elections, which require answers that go beyond the standard descriptive and legal approaches that have dominated research on the matter so far. The presentation demonstrates the potential of structural approaches to provide analytical theoretical frameworks for understanding voter turnout and participation in the Arab context.